My Word, What a Surprise!

Volunteers with no experience of social work are successfully being used in a groundbreaking scheme to help the families of children on the at-risk register. Amateurs** do better than trained professionals, who would have thought it?

Of course, the amateurs are simply getting on with things rather than going to planning meetings on outreach projects to the excluded disabled minorty ethnic people of alternative gender assignation meetings…..hmmm, I wonder, could that be the reason?

So Worstall thinks that's what social workers do all day is it? A chance would be a fine thing. Could it be that having an extra 48 workers at no cost to the local authority working on a one-to-one basis with families who's children are at risk because of neglect and piss-poor parenting is actually improving the conditions in the family and eventually reducing or eliminating neglect? Why is that such a surprise?

And despite what the article says, the cases handled by the volunteers are overwhelmingly neglect cases - not surprisingly as most child protection is about neglect anyway and not satanic abuse, as the Daily Mail might lead you to believe. And do you think these are the most serious cases on the register? Of course not. These are families where, for a number of reasons such as drink, drugs, mental health problems and 'learning difficulties' the children end up living in a completely chaotic environment and fail to receive even the most basic minimum care that any child in a family should be entitled to.

**As for 'amateurs', they are actually trained volunteers, but let's not spoil Worstall's fun.